Strategic+Writing

By Deborah Dean Reviewed by Raylin Ledbetter
 * //Strategic Writing: Moving beyond the Classroom Assignment//**

Reading, ‘riting, and ‘rithmetic have been the “three R’s” of school since the beginning of education. These three areas are still the main focus of the education system in schools, states, and the nation. However, students still struggle with having control of their ideas and being able to put them into a text. Deborah Dean has come up with an outlined way for students to become strategic writers and gain control over their writing in many different contexts (2005). But first, to have strategic students, the teacher must become strategically minded. What this means is that “teachers need to consider each writing assignment as a workshop” (Dean, 2005). Within this workshop, however, the teachers also need to push students to think beyond the box (assignment). They need to have the students think about the strategies used, how and why they were used, and when they could and should be used in another context. This kind of in-dept thinking helps create students who make good writers choices in many different contexts, not just complete the assignment and be done with it. “Strategic instruction is about giving students control over their writing” (Dean, 2005).

During the writing process, students need to be aware of “three kinds of knowing”: “declarative (knowing what the strategies [are]), procedural (knowing how to use the strategies), and conditional (knowing when to use certain strategies for certain tasks)” (Dean, 2005). With this knowing and understanding in place, the model helps students become more strategic writers by categorizing the strategies into three distinct categories, which in turn makes the writing process easier to progress through. These strategies, although not all-encompassing, can be used on any writing task. They are inquiry, drafting, and product.

Strategies for **inquiry** are to make sure that students think more in-depth about the topic on which they are writing. Students should not be able to fulfill a writing assignment off they top of their head, but rather search for more information, inspiration, and depth to the topic. Dean focuses on three strategies to accomplish this: talking, writing, and reading. She also sometimes incorporates the use of artistic and experiential strategies as well. A couple of examples she gave were on personal experiences where she had students think about the experience, visualize it, write about it, share and talk in a small group about it, then write again to answer questions asked or expand on something they had not thought about. She also has students write about their experiences in two voices to consider different perspectives on the topic. Students need to know that not all writing assignments can be done off the top of the head, and that research is an integral part of all writing (even when the topic is something the student is very passionate about). To help students understand this, teachers need to show students the research that all authors and illustrators do when completing their work.

Strategies for **drafting** are useful to students when they being to put words down on paper. The best way to get many different strategies for drafting are to introduce students to many different texts and go through what kind of strategy was used on each text. A few different strategies that Dean used are questioning strategies (going through the text and questioning students about the six traits), visualizing strategies (using highlighters to identify different texts and genre), and basic paper patterns (using the basic five paragraph paper) (2005). Once students have seen many different models, they just need to pick the best model for the type of paper they are trying to write. After they have some thoughts on paper, then Dean has her students do what she calls “fat drafting”; adding to the paper more ideas and information that what is needed (2005). Some of the strategies she uses for this are showing students where a hypertext link should be and then having the students writing the text for that hyperlink, having the students make a collage between their first and second drafts by choosing images connected to their paper to help them visualize and question themselves, and giving students writing prompt questions that make them answer and reflect on whether the topic was covered or not.

Strategies for **product** are about the revision stage of the writing process. Dean believes that students need to focus first on revising globally (genre, ideas, organization), and locally second (conventions, word-choice, and sentence fluency) (2005). Some strategies that Dean offers includes a list of questions (teacher generated and student generated) that can be followed either by a peer, the teacher, or an outside person to help revise the paper. This process of revision can take weeks for the final draft to be completed.

After the inquiry (declarative knowledge), drafting, and product (procedural knowledge), there needs to be a time for reflection (conditional knowledge) when the students can think about what strategies worked, what didn’t, and when these strategies could be used again and in what type of writing situations you would not use these strategies (2005). This type of reflection will help students become more affluent as writers and give them more control on what and how they write.